DCC Critical hits for S&W

I want to use DCC critical hits and fumbles for my Swords & Wizardry game. Fumble table maps directly. The classes map as follows:

Fighter --> Warrior
Cleric --> Cleric
Thief, Assassin, Monk --> Thief
Magic-user --> Wizard
Paladin, Ranger --> Dwarf
Druid --> Elf

The only thing I haven't decided is whether to keep the levels the same. DCC is only a 10 level game, S&W is theoretically 20. I think it might work fine to just keep the levels the same though. This fits with the flattening of the power curve after level 10. That being said it would be something to strive for at high levels.

More on paint

Since my last post I've been working more with the paints I have bought and changed my mind on a few things.

While I do love the stickiness of the Vallejo paints they are not well suited for blending. They lay down an excellent base coat (and I have read they are likewise great for layering - I don't have enough colors to try it). They look a bit "out of the tube" though, very bright and flat. The Reaper paints in contrast mix and blend beautifully. I mixed the red I have with the flesh tone and wound up with a wonderful leathery pink that I used to paint a grimoire (Malifaux Student of Battle if you care).

I have also continued to research (I am planning to buy a paint set) and apparently the Vallejo paints have a very bad separation problem. I haven't seen it yet but I don't do tons of painting so paint needs to last for me. The more I use the Reaper paints the more I like them, so I think I will probably buy a set of Reaper paint and only possibly buy Vallejo for colors that are tricky to basecoat - like yellow for example. Also, Reaper I can buy directly from them instead of going through unknown ebay dealers which to me is a plus. I have had great experiences with Reaper's customer service and they ship like lightning.

Lastly, the more I work with either of these paints the less I like my Citadel paints. Some people swear by them, and some people claim there is no difference but if I could go back I would never have bought them. They are more expensive and I find them much more difficult to work with than either of Reaper of Vallejo. My recommendation for a new painter would be: skip Citadel completely, buy a few of Vallejo and a few from Reaper and try them out, see what works for you. I have heard mixed things about P3, but I've never tried them.

Edit: One good thing for a beginner about Citadel paints for beginners is that they have pretty good coverage. I think it is hard to get a precise edge with them though due to the consistency of the paint. So a beginner might be able to lay down only a coat or two (which is satisfying) you will have a hard time not obscuring details and getting paint all over the model. I think a beginner might be more satisfied with Vallejo if coverage is an issue. Reaper is thin, which is nice for details.

These are both good paints with strengths and weaknesses. If I were rich I'd buy both. In reality I think I am going to buy heavily into Reaper and supplement here and there with Vallejo.

On paint

I don't have enough colors so I want to buy a huge paint-set thingy. I knew it was time for an upgrade from Citadel paints, but I wasn't sure what brand to go to. So I bought a few Reaper paints and a few Vallejo paints to give them a try. Both of these come in droppers instead of paint pots and have a good reputation (and cost a little more than Citadel paints). I tested them alongside the Citadel paints on a Reaper Bones model. I liked the Reaper paints, they went on a bit more cleanly than the Citadel paints and the droppers are nice. The Vallejo paints are awesome. They go on in a smooth, even coating layer and practically cling to the model.

Provisional list of skills

Basically the list of skills I might include, cobbled together from various sources and my imagination along with a few notes. Any thoughts would be appreciated.

Artistry

Athletics

Trade and appraisal

Combat (melee - maybe heavy and light separate?, missile, thrown, unarmed) – not sure if I want to include this aspect from SWN. But I thought I'd at least consider it.

Armor (heavy, light, unarmored) these wouldd probably give some sort of bonus for skill (not necessarily AC)

Culture adventurer/criminal/region/race, culture adventurer might include: how to get along in a variety of cultures, and basic adventuring skills: lighting fires, riding a horse (out of combat), appraising common goods, recognizing common monsters.

Gambling

History (probably not available to most PCs)

Instructor

Language

Leadership

Navigation

Listening

Profession (whatever trade you can think of!)

Religion (probably not available to most PCs)

Science & mathematics

Security

Stealth

Steward

Survival

Tactics

Engineering

Tech (primitive, arcane) – contemporary technology would be covered under other skills or the relevant profession

Riding

Sailing and boating

Healing

Animal handling

Poison use

Sleight of hand

Tinkering

I'm not dead yet!

But you might think my blog is.

But no! It returns from the grave! Skip to the bottom if you don't want to read personal ramblings and just want some cold hard analysis on PoD providers.

September and October are crazy months in my profession under normal circumstances (guess what I do). I started a new job this year. So yeah. No blogging happened.

What did happen though was Swords & Wizardry. I formed a new group and we have been playing Swords & Wizardry biweekly with fair consistency. The players have nearly completed The Tomb of the Iron God and some of them are level 2. We have had only a few PC deaths but many hireling deaths. It's been a blast and I will be posting some thoughts based on honest to goodness play sometime soon.

Other projects (magic realm and fantasy SWN skills) are not dead or forgotten just on hiatus.

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It's been just over a year since I first became aware of the OSR movement and realized I was not the only one who felt that modern D&D was an abomination. It is also just over a year since I bought my first PoD books from Lulu - Labyrinth Lord and Stonehell. I have bought many (too many probably) OSR products since and have developed some clear preferences.

The two main providers of print on demand for OSR products are RPGnow and Lulu. RPGnow usually includes free pdfs which is nice. But the Lulu books are much better. If you compare for example the softcover I have of Barrowmaze I with my Stonehell softcover, the Stonehell is easily the superior book. (better paper, better binding, cover is better material). Likewise, compare my Labyrinth Lord hardcovers with my Barrowmaze II hardcover (sorry Barrowmaze), again the Lulu books are made with better materials and are better constructed. While I am generally pleased with the content of books I have bought from RPGnow, the books themselves are inevitably a little disappointing.

Upshot: my recommendation would be buy from Lulu unless you really care about PDFs. I have also heard that Lulu has ridiculous shipping fees for outside of the US. That would also be a good reason (provided that RPGnow is better, I have no idea).

SWN-like skills for fantasy settings.

As much as I dislike d20 skills, I actually have enjoyed using the skill system from Stars Without Number. I've been contemplating for some time adapting that system for use with fantasy games. Even though the OSR community has a general share and share-alike policy, I went ahead and asked Kevin Crawford if it was okay to borrow from his systems and he gave an emphatic yes.

Here are my initial thoughts on what this should like:

Skills should never remove exploration or discovery from the game.

Skills should not be skill taxes or remove game play.

Skills should not be useless.

Since I will be using SWN as my baseline I will avoid the linear-skill roll problem and some of the difficulty with modifiers, character creation, and the like. I intend to rewrite the list of skills and packages pretty much from scratch for obvious reasons.

Magic Realm - Acquired!

I've been hoping to acquire a copy of Magic Realm for quite some time and a friend brought me back a copy from GenCon. Beat up box, heavily marked up rulebook, but it appears to be complete and all of the components are in good condition. In fact, many of the counters were unpunched. So tonight I did the unthinkable and punched them all out. The finicky collector in me is appalled, but I don't collect games to look at them. Expect a series of posts about me trying to figure this out.